On to Antalya

I had a strange ending to my blissful time at Kabak. The night before I left, I asked the owner, an aging surfer type named Hassan, for a bottle of my black mulberry wine from the Greek hillside town of Sirence, which he had agreed to refrigerate for me. Hassan made a big show of looking everywhere for it, in all of the refrigerators, until he dramatically threw his hands up in despair. It was clear (and it came out later that this was the case) that a family member had drank it. You would think that it would be I who threw the fit about the pilfered bottle of wine, which I had carried so far and was anticipating so much, but instead, it was Hassan who had the meltdown. I didn't understand all of his tirade--he wa inebriated--but it seemed to center around the fact I was asking him to search for it when he had nothing to do with its disappearance. It was all in Turkish, except for claim in English that "You are not understandink me." Overall, it was highly inexplicable to me and I returned to my bungalow, after reminding Hassan that I was catching the tractor up the mountain at 8:00a the next morning and would need to check out and retrieve my passport from the safe before I left.

The next morning I was ready to depart, but there was no check out, no passport, and no Hassan. The staff looked worried. Finally, the one English speaker in the gang told me that Hassan had absconded to Dalaman (a town three hours away) with my passport early in the morning. Was it punishment for seeking my black mulberry wine the night before? He was reached on his cell phone and he apologized, claiming that he was carrying it for safety and that he forgot that I was leaving. He promised to meet me at the otogar in Fethiye, the next town I was heading to. When I met up with him, he looked like a guilty schoolboy as he handed over my passport. "Why did you take it with you when you left?" I asked, and he feigned great interest in the children's magazines at the newsstand. I never did get a straight answer out of him, only a nonsensical one about how he had a fight with his sister (the family member who guzzled my wine) the day before and wasn't thinking straight. Everything seems to be in order but it makes me wonder if there is a fraudulent passport out there, identical to mine!

And now I am in Antalya, the beachside city with cobbled lanes and ancient city gates, and next, I'm going to Konya, a pilgrimage site. It is the former home of the Persian poet Rumi, and I love Rumi, although he has been co-opted by religious radicals. Young Turkish people that I meet laugh at me when I say that I am headed to Konya. Why would you want to go there, it's all relgious fanatics! they tell me. They say they are so religious, but the city of Konya consumes more alcohol that any other city! I've heard this claim so many times that I doubt its veracity. But I'm very interested to visit this singular city.

To close, a sunset veiwed from Antalya's marina.